“I hate being in the city.” Nio made a beeline for the coffee stand, which had a short line. “Why can’t we stay somewhere else?” Quinn followed. “Not feeling any better, I see.” “Meaning?” “Nothing, […]
Tag: detective
(Fiction) Bargains
The charges included assault of a minor (firing a gun at 17-year-old Guillermo Aquino); arson (of the house at 421 Asher St.); fraud (profiting under pretenses, namely, that Nio was a false expert); practicing medicine […]
(Fiction) Ruptures
Nio awoke in a box amid a tangle of limbs. Wide-eyed, she screamed and kicked and pushed them away—only to feel silk-smooth synthetic skin. A hairless sex doll stared serenely in the dark, inches from […]
(Fiction) Reversals
Del was right. Everywhere Nio might want to go was only five minutes away. Raffe’s Day and Night was a further ten outside town. The sky darkened completely on the drive. The last glow in […]
(Fiction) Appearances
The town looked as if it had been bombarded from space. A black tarp was draped over the gaping hole in a barbershop dating from the early 1900s, according to the sign. Someone had been […]
(Fiction) Holograms
The ImagiNext corporate campus clustered around a striated vertical white spire that towered like the mast of an alien sailing ship over the nearby homes and apartment blocks. As Agent Quinn drove past row after […]
(Fiction) Just don’t let your mom find it
04Oct 14:37 I sat in the car on the side of the road for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. The Cormacks’ teenage daughter was flirting loudly with a neighborhood boy on the leaf-covered front […]
(Fiction) Scratch ‘n Sniff
The neighborhood dated from the previous century. There was hardly a curb. Deep green lawns sat nearly level with the street. There were no fences. Each yard blended into the next. The Arneson house was […]
(Fiction) The Shotgun in the Bathroom
01Oct I could tell it was serious by the tone of her voice. Lieutenant Miller called me to her office where Craig Hammond, my old partner, was waiting in one of the chairs. His block […]
(Fiction) The meaning of magic
Dad was on big important phone calls all the next day, with bankers I think. Mr. A. Tranjay had said at dinner that his work would be done soon, and that was quicker than anyone […]
